Peek: Hear Me
by AllHailTheGeek
Summary: "Luke. He's there. In Cloud City. In the very jaws of Vader's trap. How the devil could I have forgotten?" Luke's first attempt at a Force bond, as told by its recipient, Princess Leia. One-shot, Leia POV.


**Disclaimer: Would I like to own Star Wars? Yes. Do I actually own Star Wars? Not a chance.**

By all means, I should be celebrating. We are really and truly lucky to be alive. I should be happy that the _Falcon_ is currently whizzing away from Cloud City, with me and Lando and Chewie aboard. But...for some reason I can't begin to explain, I'm not. Vader was there. Sometimes Vader knows things he shouldn't, like where I am or that Ben was there on the Death Star or how _exactly_ to make a man cry for mercy. He might have known we'd be escaping. So why didn't he do anything to stop it? Where was the vile twisted man anyway, when we were escaping from the docking platform? And what was he doing that would keep him so preoccupied?

I have a very bad feeling about this. Almost sick-to-my-stomach bad. And not just because Han is trapped in hibernation, encased in carbonite, rocketing on a bounty hunter's ship toward Tatooine and that beastly Jabba the Hutt. I mean, this is honestly more like _that feeling,_ the one that acted up so many times at Yavin that I couldn't quite keep them straight. It does that occasionally; I get this vague sense of foreboding and then something awful happens within a couple days that I couldn't possibly have seen coming. Or sometimes it's more acute, like it was aboard the _Tantive IV,_ screaming at me without using any words at all. And then Vader showed up and it got even worse.

It's so strange, so far-fetched, that I've never told anyone, not even my parents. I am a princess, for stars' sake! I would look the total fool, spouting nonsense about _feelings_ and whatnot! Threepio would give me a blank look and prattle on about something else, Chewie would bark something sarcastic, Artoo would beep and whistle something even more sarcastic, Han would call me crazy but I don't even want to think about Han right now, Luke would–

Luke.

He's there. In Cloud City. In the very jaws of Vader's trap.

How the devil could I have forgotten?

Whatever else you can say about _that feeling,_ it is absolutely undeniable. Luke is in Cloud City; I know this like I know which way is up! It's almost as if I can feel his mind brush against my own, another presence both foreign and familiar, some sort of a connection that would be impossible if he were anywhere else but the city– that is, if it weren't impossible already.

And if Luke wasn't such a master of removing 'impossible' from everyone's normal vocabulary.

Unable to resist, I draw a little closer to the connection or whatever it is, probing it a little further– and abruptly it widens, becoming a roiling sea of _that feeling_ in which I can hardly stay afloat, swamping me in sights and sounds and instincts that are definitely not my own! Pain, so much pain I am almost blacking out with it, shivering muscles nearly spent, half-choking on trace gases a human was never meant to breathe, pain, desperation, the _Falcon_ not as a mere transport but as a last hope...Me. My own image.

 _Leia. Leia, hear me._

He's clinging to a flimsy weather-analysis vane on the underside of Cloud City. I hear him, I know, and he knows I know. He is closer to dead than I've ever seen anyone before. I don't know what happened to him, how he got all the way down there or where in the galaxy he's been these past few months, but at the moment I don't care. The cockpit of the _Falcon_ swims back into focus, but I am already talking: "We've got to go back." Chewie growls, Lando looks astonished, but I don't care. "I know where Luke is."

"But what about those fighters?" Lando asks, gesticulating toward the scanner readout where three TIEs show up in the shade of scarlet reserved for hostile ships. Chewie growls again, and I still don't care! "Chewie, just do it," I command, trying to keep my voice from shaking. Chewie begins to turn the _Falcon_ around, not nearly fast enough for my liking, growling over Lando's fresh protests about Vader. Whatever connection I may have had with Luke is growing fainter by the second. My heart is in my throat, pounding so hard I'm surprised I could speak at all! For stars' sake, Luke is out there! He might even be dying! Can't this rustbucket of a ship go any faster?!

I have to hand it to Chewie for his piloting skills, though. He takes us straight between two TIE fighters, two green lines of fire, slicing through the gap with mere inches to spare. Several more evasive maneuvers and a dive through a patch of thick cloud later, the TIEs are far enough behind us that we can afford to slow down for a moment or two when the time comes. And said time is approaching fast, as fast as the graceful hulk of Cloud City is approaching through the viewport. My vision is inexorably drawn to a certain point on the bottom of the city, where a little black speck resolves itself as we fly steadily nearer to...a weather- analysis vane, the twig-thin aperture just barely holding the weight of…

Lando has seen him too. He points and exclaims, "Look! Someone's up there!" We have flown under the city, Chewie slackening off on speed in preparation to brake and thus allowing the TIEs to catch up with us. I do not even need to see his straw-colored hair and soulful blue eyes to know it's him up there, hanging onto that vane with the very last vestiges of his strength. I take control of the situation, sounding like a real Princess for the first time in days: "It's Luke. Chewie, slow down. Slow down and we'll get under him. Lando, open the top hatch."

It is over in a matter of seconds. Chewie diverts much of the _Falcon_ 's power to her rear thrusters and deflector shields, slowing the ship almost to a standstill as cannon blasts from the incoming fighters burst all around us, a chorus of fireworks that only heightens the frenzied, overwhelming tension. I help Chewie wrestle with his controls to the thundering percussion of explosions and other clanking noises too, the grating screech of metal on metal, alarm klaxons, my own heartbeat, sensors beeping, lights flashing, and above it all the keening wail of _that feeling,_ a death-cry of utter desperation…

...And the blessed buzz of an intercom signal, Lando's voice: _"Okay, let's go."_ He's safe! He's on the _Falcon!_ The little light that indicates an open hatch goes off, Chewie obligingly redirects whatever power he can spare from the shields to the forward thrusters, we're out, away...The TIEs are a minor problem. Our rapidly failing shields? An idle concern. All I care about, all that matters is that Luke is here, alive. A battered warrior, wounded but nowhere near that awful brink of death. Almost before I know what I'm doing, I am out of my seat and hugging him as tightly as I can. His many scratches and burns flare with pain at the sudden pressure–I don't stop to wonder how I know–but he's smiling weakly, saying my name out loud this time, and I can feel the giddy skin of relief over his underlying agony. Alive! Safe! Oh my stars, I could kiss him!

But I don't, because of Han (wherever the poor self-sacrificing nerfherder is now) and the fact that he clearly can't stay on his feet much longer. I half-lead, half-carry him from the cockpit, to a cot in the aft storage compartment that doubles as an emergency medbay. He collapses gratefully onto it, bringing his right hand out of his armpit for the first time– and I gasp, for the glaringly obvious reason that his right hand is _gone._ Severed. The stump is blistered, burned black, and I can finally see why he was, and still is, in so much pain. An image of Vader floats through my mind, standing over a broken Luke like some twisted spirit of judgment, of his blood-red laser sword thingy and the new world-altering significance of–

The picture, quite abruptly, is replaced by blank, implacable white.

I open my eyes. When did I close them?

I rise, succumb to the urge to kiss him lightly on the cheek, and leave the room with a murmured promise to return.

Because I will return, no matter what. He is more to me now, more even than he was before those two simple words traversed a gap of space and something other than space, something like to space but different to the core. Unfathomably, inexplicably, he spoke in my mind, which makes him…what? A trusted confidant? A soulmate? A brother? I may never know. The only thing I do know, the only island of stability in a churning ocean of doubt and confusion, is that he said _hear me. Leia, hear me._

And I heard.

It is unfathomable. It is inexplicable. But I dare not say it is impossible, because it happened. Impossible has become a thing of the past, from the distinctly darker time before I met Luke...and before I truly recognized _that feeling._ I strongly suspect that whatever he did to get Vader to try and "deal with" him in person, it had something to do with those laser swords. With the Jedi. With _that feeling,_ because now I know Luke feels it too. It is no dream, no phantasm of a teenage politician's over-stressed brain; it is a real power, a real force of nature. It is not mine alone. It belongs to Luke– no, that's not right, not to Luke even. It belongs to the galaxy, seemingly nowhere and yet everywhere at once. And apparently it can do amazing things, things to make the Death Star's spectacular destruction look like a wholly everyday occurrence. Things that can cause a brilliant young commander to drop off the map for months while the smoke of a huge battle is still clearing, and later turn up parsecs and parsecs away hanging off the bottom of a floating city he's never visited before, but where his friends turned out to be– out of all the myriad planets in the known galaxy.

Han says it's all luck, but for once in his life, he's absolutely wrong.

I can sense it.

 **A/N: Hey all! I decided to finish this up and post it before I go on a month-long hiatus, or at least a month without a computer– which of course means no updates, to anything. I intend this, the first of my planned Peeks series, to be a consolation prize of sorts- had to get** _ **something**_ **uploaded before vacation! As always, R &R appreciated, though I may not be able to respond!**


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